While I intended to leave at or near 5am, it was just after six when I was finally on the road. 15 hours and 1,017 miles later, I arrived in Tucson, Arizona. I am SO mush-brained right now that I've pondered sleeping with my ears plugged so my head-guts don't leak out. It didn't help that I only got four hours of sleep the night before.
The key to successfully executing the cross-country endurance road trip (i.e. > 8 hrs), is to not crash. But also very important is to keep yourself occupied. I occupied myself with snacks, drinks, music, and books on tape. In that fifteen hour period, I consumed four Mt. Dew Code Red 24 oz bottles, four 16 oz bottles of water, half a box of donuts holes, a pop tart, nearly an entire box of peanut butter Ritz bits, half a can of pringles, about eleven sticks of Big Red chewing gum, and two double-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I also listened to 11 CDs all the way through (at least 3 of them more than once through), did enough bad highway singing to make my throat sore, and listen to part one of the four part, "How to Deal With Difficult People". That last one didn't help with the can't-sleep-and-drive-at-the-same-time problem, so we'll have to catch the other three parts later.
The advantage of taking a trip of this sort without the kids is the fact that I can operate so much quicker and make sacrifices I wouldn't make if the kids were along. When the kids and I travel, every gas/restroom stop is a minimum 30 minutes. Each meal stop is a minimum hour long. Today, I was able keep each of my stops to 10-15 minutes, and I didn't stop for meals, instead eating the sandwiches I made before hand (this option is available with the kids, but doesn't have the same effectiveness). Had the kids been with me, the trip would have been AT LEAST four hours longer in my estimation. And that would have been a problem because I don't think I could have made a 19 hour drive (my standing record is a 20-hour drive back when I was still young in 1994, and that nearly killed me). The 15 hour drive was pushing it as it was, yet I have to do it again in 36 hours. 30 hours of driving in a 72 hour period. Ugh. It's times like these that I question my intelligence.
As I've already seen my mother, grandmother, uncle, and three cousins since I've been here, it would have been great for the kids to have been here, too. But we just couldn't have managed it with the timeline as it stands.
Some observations from the road:
- The sun rose behind me as I drove West, burning off the remnant clouds in western Oklahoma, revealing an awesome blue sky, while the moon, still visible just above the horizon, clung barely to the falling night.
- In Texas, I endured a tumbleweed onslaught. They were everywhere, jumping out onto the road when least expected. It was crazy. Wish I could have gotten a photo.
- New Mexico (central, mountainous areas anyway) in October is very pretty. I saw foliage I would only have expected to see back east. Taking pictures while driving is, while a favorite pastime, tricky stuff. I was trying to capture BOTH the foliage and the mountain, but I would either miss the mountain or a hill would get in the way of the foliage. Use your imagination to envision this photo and this photo as one photo.
- I watched the sun set behind the Arizona mountains. Neat stuff.
- Driving through the mountains at 80mph, as the sun is setting, with the sunroof open and music playing way louder than is likely safe for human ears is fun. Wish I could do it more often.
Tomorrow, I visit more relatives, attend a wedding, and get some rest before I have to get back on the road again.
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